


How Sweet The Winter Blooms

by alby_mangroves



Series: Written fanworks [36]
Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anne being Anne, Anne of the Island setting, Christmas, F/F, Femslash Festivus, First Kiss, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Misses Clause Challenge, Snowed In, Winter, Yuletide 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28147335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/pseuds/alby_mangroves
Summary: It's Christmas, and Diana has a terrible idea. Of course, Anne loves it.
Relationships: Diana Barry/Anne Shirley
Series: Written fanworks [36]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1181939
Comments: 22
Kudos: 62
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	How Sweet The Winter Blooms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rina (rinadoll)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinadoll/gifts).



❆ ❄ ❅

The sun gave no warmth this late in December, though it made the snow glimmer and wink like a bed of diamonds.

Diana wiped her hands on her apron and surveyed the kitchen where pies and gingerbreads and a splendid marbled chocolate and vanilla cake all sat cooling and ready for icing and decoration. Her shoulders ached, but it was the good, satisfying kind of ache of accomplishment and it was only the eve of Christmas Eve; lots of time to finish preparing the home-made feast she and Anne had devised for their families to celebrate Anne being home from Kingsport for Christmas.

They would all of them have such a feast as was worthy of a royal table, with roast duck and beef with stuffing, meat and fruit mince pies, bread sauce, and puddings all made with their own hands, and dear Marilla’s too, who’d promised to bring out her infamous red currant wine and relish, and who knew what else. Marilla was a prolific and skilled cook and would no doubt even now be making all of Anne’s favorites to bring across the way to the Barrys’, not to be outdone by Rachel Lynde who lived at Green Gables with Marilla, Dora and Davy Keith now, and probably thinking up ways to outdo everyone else.

There was a splendid tree in the parlor, dressed in colorful paper chains and red and gold silk ribbons that Minnie May had tied all around it the day before, and the scent of it brought the sharp and heady freshness of a pine forest indoors. Minnie May had hung garlands of paper through the house and strung more golden and red ribbons and bows over the doorways with bunches of winter evergreens, and taken all together the house was in a truly festive air. Tomorrow they would set the table with a white snowflake-lace cloth, with crackers between dishes to share between them that Diana’s father had bought in Charlottetown. It would be heaven.

“I love Christmas,” Diana sighed fondly, “and I’m so grateful to Mother for letting us have the house for a couple of days to prepare everything but I don’t love my sore back. We deserve a cup of tea and a sit-down after this," she said, and turned to find the cast-iron kettle was already on the stove-top, nestled between the bubbling pot of butterscotch sauce and the vegetable soup. “Anne, I think you’ve read my mind.”

"Indeed," Anne said, pushing a flick of flyaway hair from her temple with her wrist. "It's so hot in here, I've half a mind to sit outside and drink it on the porch."

"Oh, yes, why not put our skates on too and go down to the Lake of Shining Waters and catch a proper cold while we're at it, just in time for Christmas," Diana laughed, but there was a distinct absence of laughter in return. "Oh no," she sighed, shoulders dropping.

“What an absolutely splendid idea, Diana, and here you always say you've no imagination! Oh, and we’ve a perfect day for it,” Anne said, delighted, leaning on the window sill and pressing her nose to the cold glass. “Not a cloud in the sky, not so much as a breath of a breeze...but we simply can’t.”

Diana blinked, unaccustomed to such displays of common sense. “That’s right, Anne,” she said slowly, “we can’t—”

“We can’t go skating on The Lake of Shining Waters, it’s far too prosaic at this time of year. It may be called Orchard Slope but it’s all slope and no orchard right now. It’s Christmas, Diana! We shall brave the Haunted Wood and make our way to skate with the fairies among the spruce and the dogwoods on Crystal Lake!”

Diana’s jaw dropped. “Oh, Anne you can’t mean it, it’s miles away!”

Even as she said it, it was too late; Anne’s eyes were alight with joy and she had already untied her apron and thrown it over the back of a chair, so Diana did the same, following Anne’s lead as she did in so many things. How Diana had missed her.

“Oh, it’s hardly miles, and it will be perfect, we’ll take the little sandwiches left-over from last night’s supper, you know, the ones Mrs. Rachel left behind so we could admire her new platter, no doubt,” Anne continued, packing the very same sandwiches into a cloth-lined basket as she went. “I’ve a mind to cover the ugly thing with pies and set it right in front of her at the table day after tomorrow to remind her it’s just a plate.”

Diana sighed and fetched the thermos from the back of the pantry.

“And— oh, yes, Diana, what a wonderful font of ideas you are today! A thermos for our tea. We shall have a winter wonderland picnic, I can hardly wait!”

“Me neither,” Diana said weakly, “but I’m really not sure this is such a good idea, it’s already afternoon and we’ve so much to do, Mother will be back soon and— ” She looked around her at the work yet to do and wrung her hands. It was a valiant last-ditch effort to halt the madness, but ultimately, they were as good as out the door and skating already, Anne having packed the basket in a whirlwind and bundled them both into their coats somehow at the same time.

“Nonsense, Diana, we’ve done everything and more than we set out to this morning, and it’s hardly late, we’ve positively loads of time, and I’ve just realized that I haven’t seen Crystal Lake in winter in all these years, I don’t know how, but it’s true. I think it must be absolutely stunning now, covered in snow, those elegant birches swaying, winter magic soaking the woodlands all around...”

Anne had begun to sway side to side as though skating already, her face in raptures over her own vision of Crystal Lake as a wintry fairy-inhabited idyll, but Diana hadn’t quite given up yet.

“The last time we were up there it was a muddy puddle full of rotting weeds, I can’t imagine we’ll find anything else.”

Anne fell silent and looked at her squarely, and Diana was a fool for Anne’s complete and undivided attention, which had never ceased to affect her since the fateful day of their first meeting, even in the face of outrageous recklessness and the most harebrained ideas.

“Dearest Diana, I just know you can imagine so much more than that,” Anne said, quiet and low, and there had never been much hope, really, that they would stay home in Diana’s warm, sweet-smelling kitchen when they could set out on an expedition to explore a frozen, muddy waterhole up near the back fields of the farms that ran out to the upper Carmody Road, skates slung over their shoulders by their tied-together laces.

❆ ❄ ❅

It didn’t take long for reality to set in, and Diana wasn’t sure which was worse; the thick layer of snow along country paths that had not been cleared, or Anne’s increasingly smile-free expression. What took a very pleasant half-hour on a sunny spring day when out strolling with friends for a picnic, took considerably more time and effort when trudging through thick, fresh snowfall with your skirts weighted down with wet.

The afternoon waned, but the sunshine seemed to deepen and glow. The trees were bare except for the evergreen spruce, and where Diana remembered picking bunches of elephant’s ears along the path, there were boughs of leafless bracken under pillows of snow, spring crocuses many weeks away yet.

Anne walked ahead on the narrow lane path; where the sun touched her hair, it burned with a ferocity she would hate to hear about, but Diana often thought that if anyone except Anne owned that glorious hair, Anne would have poeticized about it plenty. It was the most beautiful of all when aflame with sunshine like this, and even this ill-advised outing seemed less so when one could forget about their wet skirts and work waiting back home by looking their fill at such a beautiful, secret thing as the glow of the afternoon sun in Anne Shirley’s red hair.

“I think we’re almost there,” Anne said, brightening, and Diana looked up to the sky in silent thanks. Her sodden skirt had been sticking to her legs and the sensation of snow seeping into her rubbers was almost intolerable.

But Anne had been right, they were there after all, and even the gentle snow that had begun to fall couldn’t hide the pretty winter wonderland that the glade of the shallow woodland pool had become for Christmas. The archway of wild cherry trees looked stark without their leafy crown but no less charming for its loss.

With any luck, they’d be done skating in twenty minutes and back home before dusk to start on the duck.

❆ ❄ ❅

They walked into a Wintergreen framed glade that seemed to exist outside of the world; a soft and quiet place, and quite surprisingly, flowers. Wild lily of the valley sprung up in bunches, as did leafy green ferns and even some tufts of foxberry had outwitted Jack Frost to line the banks of the little pond to create a very pretty winter garden.

“Oh, Diana, it’s more beautiful than I imagined,” Anne said dreamily, which Diana privately thought was surprising. Anne could imagine quite a lot, and if this tiny place—although very pretty—surpassed her expectations then perhaps they’d been quite low to begin with.

“I guess it has a certain charm,” Diana said, and it did—there was a softly padded, secret air about it, like a secret room, which would have appealed quite thoroughly to Anne’s romantic sensibilities. The Crystal Lake itself—a pond, really—was certainly crystal. Snow had built up around the ferns and greenery on shallow banks but the surface itself looked very nicely glazed and frozen over.

“I knew it would, the last time we were here, we were only girls, and the water was just fine and clear until we all jumped in and stirred up the mud with our feet, so we can hardly judge it by that,” Anne said, then as if something had suddenly struck her, her mouth gone round, “Oh, Diana! Look, it’s just like a mirror!” Her grey eyes were huge and very very bright. “I wanted to call it The Fairies’ Mirror that day, do you remember? It was Jane’s choice we picked out of my hat and there was nothing for it, her choice won fair and square, but there’s nobody here but us and I say it’s the Fairies’ Mirror.” Anne was looking very pleased indeed, her mittened hands on her hips, cheeks and nose pink with cold, flyaway hair curling around her face.

It wasn’t long before they’d tied on their skates, taking turns to lean on each others’ shoulder, and for the magic of the secret little place and the joy on Anne’s face to rub off on Diana and melt away any remaining reservations about their impromptu outing.

The little pond was nothing special to anyone who might have stumbled across it, the woodland was like all the other tufts of forest dotted around their island, but Anne was here and saw the magic in it, and Diana realized that it wasn’t that Anne had low expectations, it was that Anne found beauty and magic in everything where others could not, and showed it to Diana where Diana hadn’t thought to look for it.

“There isn’t much room,” Diana said and could have bitten her tongue at how she always seemed to be the one to cast shadows of doubt on Anne’s face when all she wanted was her smiles and happiness.

“Well, we will just have to skate close together, arm in arm, just like we did when we were girls,” Anne said, and so they did just that for a little while, Anne’s arm under Diana’s, her red curls escaping their clasp and tickling Diana’s neck, and her warm, laughing breath on Diana’s cheek as they turned in little circles all around the ice-glazed lick of a pond they’d found years ago.

“I’m beginning to warm up to this idea,” Diana said, Anne’s infectious laughter ringing in her ear, and so, of course, that was when she caught her skate, her foot twisting painfully, and tumbled down, taking Anne with her to the frozen surface of the pond which groaned alarmingly, wanting to crack under their weight.

“Oh no, Anne, my ankle, can you help me to shore?” Diana said quietly, as though a loud noise might break the ice all the way and send them tumbling in. Anne grabbed her hands and gently pulled until they were both at the bank, nervously laughing at their narrow escape.

“The good news is we didn’t go in,” Diana said, teeth chattering, and although it hadn’t been a bad fall, it was very apparent that they were in a predicament. Anne carefully removed Diana’s skates before her ankle swelled too much, and held her stockinged foot for a gentle turn and stretch.

“Only a sprain, thank goodness, we will just have to be very careful about getting home.” She slid Diana’s rubbers on and changed her own footwear. “I would say let’s put something cold on it, but it’s not likely to get too warm as it is.”

Diana hissed in pain while trying to put weight on her foot and while it was only a sprain, nevertheless it was serious enough for the imminent walk home in the evening chill and snow to be an awful prospect.

“We could go to little Hester Gray’s garden—it’s right there, just around the corner—and rest a little. We will put your foot up to help the swelling, and I will go and fetch help,” Anne said, all the joy gone from her voice. Diana’s heart sank.

“It’s really not so bad, but I suppose we could, yes, let’s try,” she said, and so they went, a little unsteady, supporting each other around their waist until they reached the remains of the Grays’ house, long abandoned to nature and nearly lost among the tangled, bare brushes of the once-beautiful garden. What was once a little house all hung with vines was barely a hearth and chimney with a portion of roof over it now, the stones of the hearth the only thing left standing among the ruins reclaimed by the woodland.

Anne helped Diana to lean against the column of the old porch while she put her shoulder to the door, shoving it open enough for them to scoot inside, minding Diana’s poor, hurt foot, until they were inside the remains of the little cabin, now but a ruined stone marker in the woods.

❆ ❄ ❅

There was a small stack of loose hay in the corner, likely gathered together by the draughts let in through the broken-down walls in the years since she and Anne had last come here, and though it smelled a little damp and the sky peeked in through the holes in the roof, the little house would give them enough respite for Anne to check Diana’s ankle and make her comfortable while Anne went for help.

“I hope there aren’t any mice because I’m in no shape to scream and run,” Diana said, looking around at the dilapidated little cabin, so bare and cold. She sniffed a little in the cold. “It doesn’t smell like mice.”

Anne looked quite grave as she helped Diana sit on the old kitchen chair—the only piece of furniture in the whole place—it groaned quite alarmingly now, more so than when they were younger when she settled in it but held up, the poor old thing.

“I wonder that nobody has reclaimed the land by now,” Diana said.

“I should think that all the Grays’ family are gone now, too, there isn’t anyone to reclaim it,” Anne said, glumly. “I’m sad for the garden, it deserves to have a kind and loving hand looking after it, but I’m glad it’s still ours and nobody else’s.”

Diana took off her mittens and cupped Anne’s face where she knelt at Diana’s feet to remove her rubbers and check her foot again. “Even if someone else lives here one day or the fairies come to claim it, it will always be ours and nobody else’s,” she said, and Anne looked up, a lovely pink blush rising on her face. Perhaps it was the exertion of skating, and then nearly carrying Diana to safety that had put it there.

“Oh! Do you remember when we came up here after your acceptance to Redmond, you said you wanted to share the news with Hester who would never go to college and you felt sad she would never again leave this place at all so we came here and we lit a fire in the hearth...do you think those matches may still be there?”

Anne stilled, her hand gentle on Diana’s ankle. “Oh yes, how could I forget! I think I hid them,” she said, going over to the hearth and loosening a slate-colored stone, “right here!” She reached inside the gap and pulled out the book of matches, a little dusty and stained with age, but otherwise in perfect shape.

“Oh thank goodness, my feet are freezing,” Diana laughed with relief and saw it reflected on Anne’s face, too, though she still wasn’t smiling as she gathered clumps of hay and some sticks and branches to get a little fire going, smoke from the wet wood rising up not through the chimney, which must have been blocked with weeds and debris, but through the many holes in the weathered roof.

“Our picnic!” Anne said and went off in search of the basket they’d abandoned by the pond, and soon they were drinking thermos tea with its particular picknicky taste, and eating Rachel Lynde’s leftover sandwiches, a smoky little fire going merrily beside them.

They ate accompanied by the gentle sounds of the woodland and the crackling of the little fire, and it was so pleasant and agreeable to sit with Anne that Diana took a long moment to notice that Anne hadn’t said a word until the silence was broken.

“Are you quite all right, Anne?” Diana said quietly, pushing a lock of hair from Anne’s temple and tucking it behind the pale shell of her ear.

“Oh, I’m _quite_ all right, but the same can’t be said for your poor foot,” Anne said quickly, as though the dam inside her had been waiting to break. “It's not like a sprinkling of white pepper instead of ginger in your tea that I can pretend never happened if you didn't notice it. What a terrible friend I turned out to be, gone most of the year and home for Christmas barely two days and I’ve dragged you out only to twist your ankle and suffer in the snow,” she went on, voice rising. “And now I must leave you alone with night about to fall to fetch someone to help us home.” Anne rose to her feet and gathered up what remained of their picnic, which was of course when the snow began to fall again, softly silent and pristine against the darkening sky. “And now it’s snowing!”

Diana stretched her foot; it felt much better after a little rest. “You may not need to go anywhere,” she said, and Anne turned to her, upset and unsmiling, tugging on Diana’s heart.

“We’ve done most of the work, the duck will keep for tomorrow, it’s a lovely evening outside, I know how much you love falling snow. We are warm and fed, and we have hot tea with no pepper in it—which...what on earth Anne, I shall have to know more about this later—and help is probably on its way already.”

Anne simply looked at her, and Diana smiled gently. “I left a note,” she said.

“You did?”

“In case Marilla sent one of the twins over for something or other, or in case Mother got home and wondered where we were. If anyone was going to find a way to get themselves into trouble two days before Christmas it would be you, and by extension me, so I thought it a good idea someone knows where we are.”

Anne looked at her with such exasperated fondness, Diana’s little heart galloped in her chest. “Of course you did, dearest Diana.” And when Diana looked up, Anne was right there with her hands on Diana’s face.

“I turned Gilbert down. And Roy Gardner, and— well, others hardly worth mentioning,” Anne said, but there was a queer look in her eye like there was a story there that Diana would find absolutely hilarious and Anne would have to be forced to tell it under pain of death and tickles. Her eyes were almost translucent in the dusk light, the sweet scent of her so very close, Diana was struck dumb. She’d wanted so many times to ask, and hadn’t.

“Why?”

Anne’s eyes roamed over Diana’s face and she felt that gaze so acutely, all of her nerves aflame and tingling.

“I realized I had fallen in love long ago, with someone who fits in my life already without all the fuss and grand gestures and romantic compliments. Someone who knows me better than I know myself,” she said, and then Anne’s lips met Diana’s in a soft, warm press that had her stomach swooping and an entire flight of butterflies swooping right along with it.

Anne was kissing her, trembling, pushing up into Diana’s embrace, her slim body so strong and real in Diana’s arms.

Diana gasped, kissed back, putting her hands around Anne’s waist to bring her closer and pull the two of them tightly together and something that had been coiled up in Anne let go and she melted in Diana’s arms. In all the years she had loved Anne ever so quietly, she hadn’t even dared to imagine this moment, and now here it was, and it felt like breathing, like breaking through the surface of thick ice and breathing for the first time. Diana’s whole body sang with it.

It was so warm to be in Anne’s arms, it was like being awake when she hadn’t known she’d been asleep. She twisted her fingers into Anne’s hair and it was just as she remembered from when they were girls and Anne would let her touch it and play with it, so grudgingly, always so scathing of it when Diana wanted nothing more than to put her face in it and live amongst it like one of Anne’s dryads in a stream.

“I have always loved you, even when I didn’t know what it meant,” Diana said, kissing Anne’s sighs from her mouth, fingers tangled in her hair. “You were so unlike anyone else I had ever known, and you never looked down at me, and I loved you for that first, and for your hair, I've always loved your gorgeous hair.”

“I don’t know which part to ask about first,” Anne said, pulling away just enough for Diana to see the roses in her cheeks, the beautiful bough of her trembling mouth.

“You were wild, like fire, unpredictable, always moving, I could never hope to keep up. And your hair was flames, like I would burn my fingers trying to touch it.”

“And to me, yours was silk. Black ink. Velveteen,” Anne said, and Diana could see the truth of it in Anne’s hot gaze. “I wanted to sink into it.”

“And you never treated me like I was a stupid country child. I always felt like a somebody when you looked at me. It’s not a romantic compliment but you’ve heard those already, and yet here you are. And anyway, it’s the best I have,” Diana said, and kissed Anne sweetly, softly at first, until some kind of heat had passed between them and turned their hands grasping and their soft lips hungry.

When Anne pulled back again, her mouth was red and glossy and her voice reverent, near to whispering. “My darling Diana, it’s all I want. To me, you were all I had ever wished I could be: kind and warm and beautiful. You always made me feel like I was a somebody, too,” Anne said, and Diana could see them in her room on Christmas night, Anne’s hair spread over Diana’s pillow, flames she could touch and bury her face in.

She saw them years from now, in the orchard, kissing and laughing in the sunshine, and in the kitchen, talking and baking and one day making a home. She saw the life they could have and felt heat rising behind her eyes. “I adore you,” she said and pulled Anne close to her again because every moment they weren’t kissing was a wasted one.

“I want to kiss you under the moonlight with the snow falling,” Anne said breathlessly, and Diana laughed, delighted. Of course Anne wanted that, Diana wanted it too. She gave Anne her hands and they hobbled outside to stand together under the canopy of the whole entire sky, snow falling gently on their upturned faces, and Anne had said something about not needing grand gestures, but what was grander than the navy satin of a winter sky to declare your love under? And that’s how little Davy found them only a little while later, hand in hand and rosy-cheeked, whispering to each other, Anne’s hair in a mess and Diana’s ankle raised up.

“You found my note!” Diana said happily, and Davy grinned.

“Yes, and when I showed it to Marilla, she said I ought to come with the sled and look for you because you’d likely be dancing with the snow fairies and too tired to walk home.”

“Perhaps not the only person who knows me better than I know myself, then,” Anne said grimly, and Diana laughed so much that Anne had to bundle her onto the sled else she fall over and hurt herself more. Evening had fallen and the snow was gently pattering on them as they made their way towards the lights of Green Gables where Marilla was probably at the window and waiting for them to pass so she could give them a piece of her mind, and beyond that, Orchard Slope and within it the Barrys’ sweet-smelling home, and within it Diana’s room, and Diana’s warm bed, and beyond that, their lives to plan and plot together.

❆ ❄ ❅


End file.
